SALT LAKE CITY — It was started as a meme to make fun of the rise of cryptocurrency, but Dogecoin has seen an absolutely meteoric rise, and Utah is talking about it.
If you happened to buy into the internet currency adorned by a derpy-looking Shiba Inu dog on New Year’s Eve, your investment would have grown by altcoins. If you bought in when it hit its all-time low on May 07, 2015 altcoins
What is Dogecoin?
Dogecoin was started as a satire in 2013 by Jackson Palmer from Portland, Oregon and Jackson Palmer from Sydney, Australia, to make fun of the rise of all sorts of “altcoins” (cryptocurrency other than bitcoin.)
But even though it was birthed as a joke, this meme coin has found its fair share of high-profile supporters.
The most well-known of those supporters is billionaire and founder of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk, the self-proclaimed “doge-father.”
The Dogefather
SNL May 8— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2021
“The point is that Dogecoin was invented as a joke, as essential to make fun of cryptocurrency, and I think there’s an argument that fate loves irony. Like what would be the most ironic outcome? That the currency that was invented as a joke in fact becomes the real currency,” Musk told TMZ in February.
The future of cryptocurrency
Musk said he thinks there’s a fair chance that crypto becomes the currency of earth. That being said, though, he doesn’t think that people should go out and invest their life savings saying at this point. It’s all just speculation.
But the meme has found more love than just from the techno-king of Tesla. Dallas Mavericks owner and fellow billionaire Mark Cuban is also a fan.
“Doge is the one coin that people actually use for transactions,” Cuban said on Twitter. “People spend their Doge and that means more businesses will start taking it.”
Cuban has also put his digital money where his real-life mouth is too, in March the Mavericks announced you could buy a ticket to see the team play with Doge. That move also apperently made them the largest Dogecoin merchant in the world.
The @dallasmavs have done more than 20,000 #Dogecoin in transactions, making us the LARGEST #DOGECOIN MERCHANT IN THE WORLD ! We thank all of you and can only say that if we sell another 6,556,000,000 #DOGECOIN worth of Mavs merch, #dogecoin will DEFINITELY HIT $1 !!!???
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) March 6, 2021
@girlstalkstocksMARK CUBAN TWEETED ME BACK ? THIS IS GOING TO BE MY FIRST ##NBA GAME EVER. ##fyp ##dogecoin ##WorthTheWait♬ Intro – The xx
Utah loves the Dogecoin
Apparently, it’s not just billionaires that love them a little Dogecoin either. According to a data analysis team at someka.net, Utah ranks #4 in the nation for folks talking about Dogecoin.
The team measured geotagged Twitter information to create a heat map of trending topics from around the country and found out that us in the Beehive State were using a lot of keywords associated with Dogecoin.
In the top 10 rankings, Alabama took the top spot followed by:
- Pennsylvania
- South Carolina
- Utah
- Florida
- Idaho
- Alaska
- California
- Iowa
- New York
The 31 cent coin
To put the trading into perspective, at the time of writing, a single Dogecoin is currently worth $0.31. In contrast, a single Bitcoin is currently worth $53,808.95
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